


Big Realizations

by bedegraine



Category: Merlin (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-10
Updated: 2011-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-23 14:36:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedegraine/pseuds/bedegraine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur realizes when he's fifteen that he cares a great deal more for Merlin than for the rest of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Big Realizations

Arthur realizes when he's four that Merlin is different. It's not just the tufted raven-black hair and naturally ashen skin that sets the other young boy apart- especially from Arthur himself, who is nearly the polar opposite and matches him only in the depth of blue in their irises- but his entire disposition. He seems to radiate with whatever emotion he's feeling. He almost glows when he's happy. His sadness is contagious. Arthur finds it's more of an effort not to like him than to do the opposite. Occasionally he smiles (really, truly smiles, in the way smiling was meant to be) when Arthur thinks he has no business smiling at all.  
He realizes all of this with wisdom and complexity that is beyond his short years and foreshadows much of what is to come.

Arthur realizes when he's eight that Merlin is his best friend, and probably will be for a very long time. (There is no one who understands him quite like Merlin does, he thinks.) It's a realization born in the span of a second, all at once considered and confirmed in the way only an eight-year-old-boys mind can convict. It's when Merlin sits across from him in his lofty, expensive bedroom and comforts away the tears tracking his soft cheeks that it is made.  
"Don't listen to your dad," Merlin says. "How's he supposed to know anything about you? He's never around. I'm around all the time, and I say he can shove off."  
They're brash words for a boy still young enough to consider 'stupid' a cuss word, and though time will make Arthur forget exactly what his father said to upset him so, he'll always remember Merlin's comforting presence.

Arthur realizes when he's twelve that Merlin isn't invincible. He considers it to be the most horrifying of all the realizations he's made so far, then amends that it might only be quite so horrifying because of the way he'd made it.  
It's two days after Merlin's twelfth birthday that he falls out of the tree in Arthur's backyard. One moment he's at Arthur's tail, following him upwards in the sparse branches, and the next he's eighteen feet below landed on his back with an oomph. (Later Arthur will go back and measure the exact distance that Merlin fell for a reason he can't quite explain other than to say he needed to know.)  
It's in the next ten minutes that Arthur makes his horrifying, terrifying, eye-opening realization; somewhere between scrambling down the trunk of the tree and kneeling next to Merlin, assessing that he isn't dead, only knocked unconscious, and running to the house yelling for someone to call help.  
One of the cooks, Cecilia, calls an ambulance then Merlin's mom. She and Arthur follow the ambulance to the hospital and arrive at the same time as Hunith does.  
Merlin is awake within the hour, burdened only with a mild concussion and a broken arm. It's nothing life-threatening, but Arthur still cannot stop from hovering at his thin friends bedside and skirting nervous looks at all the medical machinery in the room as though its mere presence in Merlin's vicinity is threatening and offending.  
Merlin laughs it off and tells him to stop looking so horrified. Arthur calls him an idiot for falling out of the tree in the first place.  
When Hunith finishes signing all the paperwork pertaining to Merlin's care she returns to the room and gathers them both in a breath-stealing embrace, careful not to touch Merlin's damaged arm, and demands that they both be more careful and "For God's sake, could you both try not to get yourselves killed!"  
Arthur decides then that Merlin is his responsibility, and his alone. (Because no one else will do a good enough job, he tells himself, and God help them all if Merlin was left to look after himself.) He also decides that as long as he lives, Merlin will never be hurt again.

Arthur realizes when he's fifteen that he cares a great deal more for Merlin than for the rest of the world. Merlin's happiness (the infectious happiness, the radiant happiness) seems to simply be more valuable than anyone elses, including his own. It's not a sudden or consuming epiphany, it does not convict in a way that dulls the importance of the rest of the world; nor is it preceded by any certain event that catapults it into being and sends him careening over the edge of some cliff of conscious thought.  
It's just one of those days when he and Merlin sit across from each other, in the diner down the street from their high school, and he looks up. All he does is look up and find that unchanged, childish smile on Merlin's face, and there the knowledge is. Surfaced as though it had just been skimming below the top of some calm lake in Arthur's mind. (Or heart.)  
He attributes it to the bond they've shared since infancy and takes it in stride, then surprises himself by finding that it was hardly a realization at all. He'd known it all along.

Arthur realizes when he's sixteen that it's hardly normal for a boy his age to have literally no sexual or dating history, and even less normal for a boy his age to have literally no interest in girls at all. He shoves this realization back into whatever mentally padlocked box it had sprung from and locks it back up tight, choosing to ignore it's ramifications.

Arthur also realizes when he's sixteen that jealousy is the bitterest emotion of them all. Especially when one can't (or doesn't want to) begin to explain or justify that jealousy.  
"Sorry, I can't tonight. I'm going to Freya's," Merlin says, and that great terrible beast rears in Arthur's chest. He tells himself that it's just the shock of Merlin not always at his disposal after thirteen years of shared reliance, but he begins to fear it's not quite as innocent as that.  
And this perhaps stole the cake as the most terrifying realization he'd ever made.  
Eventually Merlin says "Freya and I broke up, she's moving away," with doe eyes that speak of a fragile state, and, guiltily, the beast in Arthur's chest purrs and rests.

Arthur realizes when he's seventeen that there's a timer on his life. Or rather, he realizes that there's a timer on the amount of life he has left to live before high school ended. For some reason, this feels like a gravely important realization. It's a metaphorical close to a chapter of his life, the opening of a new one. He's surprised to find himself nearly eighteen. An adult in the eyes of the law. He's even more surprised to find that Merlin has followed him in this, aged and wised and grown into his lanky skin, and is now also nearly eighteen and about to open the next chapter of his life.  
He finds he isn't ready for it. Even with all the thought he'd given it through the years (and with a father like his, there was no way he hadn't given it a lot of thought), and all the preparation he'd undergone, when it becomes a nearing reality rather than a distant future, he finds himself filled with a deep dread. He feels unrest and failure in his bones, feels as though he's running out of time without quite knowing what it is he needs to accomplish.  
"What's wrong?" Merlin says across their usual table at the diner.  
"What if I'm not entirely ready for this to end?" Arthur says.  
Merlin considers this for a few moments (Merlin always knows when Arthur needs serious and when Arthur needs distracting; it's one of the products of- or reasons for- their long friendship), then wets his lips before answering. "Well, I don't think it would make a difference if you were or you weren't. There's no stopping time. Everyone doubts sometimes, and everyone mourns the past. Especially if they had one as great as ours." He flashes a grin and is serious again in an instant. "But I think that it's the way you handle it that matters. You can either chase the past, which is an exercise in futility if there ever was one, and waste your future, or you can embrace the future, accomplish things, and make the most of your time."

Arthur realizes five months before graduation exactly what he needs to make the most of his future. This epiphany is, in fact, the sudden and consuming kind. It comes complete with conviction that not only muffles the importance of everything else, but also blurs any thought other than acquiring the great single thing that will ever make any time worth spending on earth. Later on he will be grateful for the mind-consuming nature of the realization, and his senseless haze following it, because it robs him of any chance to second guess himself.  
He opens his gifts on Christmas morning, sitting next to his sister and across from his father, as he had every Christmas since he was born. He saves Merlin's gift for last- after his father has diplomatically wished them both good tidings and retreated to his office- as he had every Christmas since he was three. He unwraps the themed paper carefully, peeling the tape off rather than ripping through it. Underneath is a medium-sized picture frame, and inside the frame is a picture, taken by Hunith, of himself and Merlin. They stand, ten years old, on a beach in the middle of the summer. Arthur remembers this day, remembers slinging his arm over Merlin's shoulders as they walked with their toes in the water as though they hadn't had a care in the world (and, in hindsight, they hadn't). He remembers Merlin's grin and Hunith's insistence to capture almost all of the day on film. As far as Arthur knew, all the pictures had turned out awfully overexposed.  
He supposes that either Hunith or Merlin managed to restore one, and he's unequivocally grateful that they did. The image pangs in his chest, full of the sweetness of the memory and the comfort of compatibility and the warmth that is just Merlin. His fingers graze something on the underside of the frame, and he flips it over. On the back is a yellow post-it note.  
'Just because you're embracing the future doesn't mean you can't rejoice in the past. Some things you don't have to work for.'  
In a single second, Arthur relives every moment he'd ever spent with Merlin, in a completely new light. And when that moment ends, there's only one option clear. The gift isn't just a picture. The gift is Merlin. It's all Merlin is and all he'll ever be. It's everything Merlin and Arthur are. It's happiness and joy and promise and everything Arthur was positive he couldn't live without. It's one of those things that seems insignificant to any third party looking in (say, Arthur's sister, who glances at the picture fondly and with none of the finality that bubbles higher in Arthur's chest the longer he looks at it), but is reality-altering when lived from within.  
"Excuse me," he mutters, and stands.  
"Is Merlin here?" he asks when Hunith answers the door.  
"I want to know what I've accomplished," he says when Merlin stands in front of him. Merlin looks confused, but only confused by his words. He doesn't seem the least bit surprised or offended that Arthur's shown up on his doorstep unannounced on Christmas morning.  
"I want to embrace the future," he says, then takes a step forward, closes his hands around Merlin's arms, and kisses him.

Arthur realizes later that had he given any forethought to his decisions before making them- any at all- and he would never have gone to Merlin's house that morning. Which meant, had he not been lost in a daze of pent-up emotions, he never would have known how Merlin tastes. Or what it feels like when he pulls closer, wraps his arms around Arthur's neck, stands toe-to-toe with him and kisses him back with desperate force. Later, much later, Arthur cannot fathom any reality in which he does not know these things.

Arthur realizes when he's twenty that Merlin is perfect. Merlin denies this.

Arthur realizes when he's twenty-two that nobody is perfect, but Merlin is perfect for him.

Arthur realizes when he's twenty-three that he hates every second spent away from Merlin. Not because he'd spent his entire life trying to make him smile, but because he doesn't truly feel there was any point to life without that smile.

Arthur realizes when he's twenty-five that he's desperately and fiercely in love with Merlin. He has been since they were three, he says.  
"That makes us sound like weird, sexual little children," Merlin says.

Arthur continues realizing things after this, but they seem trivial to mention.

 

Merlin realizes when he's ten that he can't imagine a future without Arthur in it (his eyes or his laugh or the slope of his shoulders when he walks), and decides he absolutely never wants to try.


End file.
